News, notes, and anecdotes on the Fort Wayne TinCaps

Work to Do, Bring Back Brown, Simply Irresistible

A walk-off win for the TinCaps on Saturday didn’t carry quite the momentum Fort Wayne would’ve hoped for into Sunday’s action. Wisconsin took the middle game of the series, winning 8-2 and showing that sometimes a little good fortune can go a long way.

A two-out, fifth-inning bloop to left field by Nick Ramirez prolonged TinCaps starter Cody Hebner’s day, and allowed the Timber Rattlers to score three more runs in the inning. If there’s no wind fiercely blowing in from left field, it’s likely that Kyle Gaedele makes that catch in left field. Wind = 4 run inning. No wind = 1 run inning. Although the final margin was six runs, it certainly makes a difference at the plate when your team is down by four rather than just by one.

Fort Wayne had at least one baserunner in every inning of Sunday’s game, but went just 2-9 with runners in scoring position, failing to capitalize on most chances.

A win tonight would give the TinCaps a series victory in six of their first eight second-half series, leading up to an off day tomorrow.

In today’s TinCaps Report Podcast, hear from a very forthcoming Cody Hebner, who took the loss in Sunday’s game:

“Brown and the Padres, like surf and San Diego, go way back, to 1969 and the franchise’s first big league season. The original Padres wore uniforms, logos and caps trimmed with, and sometimes dominated by, brown mated with mustard. As if to distract fans from the team’s performances, the club changed its uniforms several times over the next few decades, dabbling with orange, changing the lettering, adopting a rainbow blend and also pinstripes — but brown, as plucky as David Eckstein, survived until blue arrived in 1991, nearly 15 years after Crystal Gayle first sang, “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.”

Over the years, Padres fans nostalgic for the 1970s and ’80s have lamented the brownout. A passionate vocal minority is how Padres president Tom Garfinkel, in the job since 2009, described the bring-back-the-brown crowd last year.

A club poll of Padres fans, Garfinkel said, showed “a much larger segment of the fan base that was adamantly opposed to the brown.”

Appreciation for the brown mystique, however, isn’t limited to the more seasoned Padres fan.

“I think it’s a great color that’s unique,” said Padres outfielder Will Venable, 29, a Princeton man and son of former San Francisco Giants outfielder Max Venable. “I’m a big fan, really, of any of the throwback jerseys we wear, especially the brown ones. It’s something that myself and a lot of the guys here are happy to wear.”

Done right, brown could be a moneymaker for the Padres, who have the smallest payroll in the majors and play in one of the five smallest TV markets in the major leagues. As the only major league team to wear brown, think of the marketing tie-ins with UPS. What brown can do for you.

Instead of continuing to look like the Brewers or the Mariners, two wearers of pedestrian dark blue, the Padres could stand on their own. “

You disagree. You are not one of those people, trying to plug your gaping inner emptiness with cut-rate consumer goods. You are a discriminating shopper, a person of real substance, a unique snowflake. It doesn’t matter. QVC has something you want. And—odds are—has it at a price you can’t resist.

While researching this article—that is, watching QVC in earnest—I made the mistake of suggesting to my television-hating mother that she should tune in to a presentation of some Reed & Barton flatware, which she’d wanted to buy for a cousin’s wedding gift.

And to be fair, 30 minutes later, she had not bought any flatware. Somehow, though, our family came to own three jumbo sets of Lock and Lock storage containers, in Kiwi, Fuchsia, and Coral—one for each of us, and one for my sister. Now that we each had a color-coded personal set, my mother explained, the McArdle women would never again tussle over the Tupperware.”

While I’ve never bought anything off of an infomercial or from QVC, I have sold things that were “As Seen on TV”…but that’s another story for a different day.

Wasn’t QVC just the fix that shoppers needed before online shopping came around? It was founded in 1986, and it’s impressive that it’s still around today, considering all of the alternatives.

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